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Heat-death by volcano - how Venus went rogue?The idea of a habitable Venus epoch has gained traction in recent years via 1-D and 3-D General Circulation Modeling (GCM) efforts [1,2,3]. Although recent work has supported an alternative permanent hot and dry scenario [4]. However, the habitable scenario presents us with a conundrum - how does a terrestrial planet transform from temperate to hot-house? For decades it was proposed that the gradual brightening of the sun was the probable cause [5]. Yet 4 billion years ago Venus was receiving nearly 1.4 times the insolation that Earth receives today, and many studies have put Earth at the inner boundary of the habitable zone today [6]. The newer 3-D GCM efforts have demonstrated that if Venus had an early habitable period, that the cloud-albedo feedback responsible for maintaining temperate surface conditions [7] could still be in operation today. From this perspective increasing insolation through time cannot be an answer to the transition from habitable to hot-house. We propose that the 'Great Climate Transition' (GCT) was trigged by simultaneous large igneous provinces (LIPs) akin to those like the Siberian Traps responsible for the End Permian [8]. We have taken the most up to date LIP database for Earth [9] and characterized their distribution through time as random or nearly random. Next we initiate a large suite of Monte Carlo simulations based on this record and generate the likelihood for simultaneous, or environmentally overlapping events in this hypothetical setup. We find the probability of such events to be quite high, a probable cause for Venus' GCT, and a possible harbinger of things to come for Earth.
Document ID
20210026666
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Michael Way
(Goddard Institute for Space Studies New York, New York, United States)
Jeffrey Scargle
(Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Richard Ernst
(Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
Date Acquired
January 11, 2022
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Meeting Information
Meeting: European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2022
Location: Vienna
Country: AT
Start Date: April 3, 2022
End Date: April 8, 2022
Sponsors: European Geosciences Union
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 811073.02.52.01.46
WBS: 281945.02.03.11.56
WBS: 811073.02.52.01.08.53
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Use by or on behalf of the US Gov. Permitted.
Technical Review
Single Expert
Keywords
Venus
habitability
general circulation model
cloud-albedo feedback
temperate surface conditions
hot-house conditions
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